When people hear my daughter and when they know about her wisdom and maturity, they think that her father must have been sitting with her and mentoring her. They think he would have spent a lot of time in bringing her up. They think he would have constructed her.

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.

I know that [Mike] Tyson talked about wanting to eat his opponent's children, but I don't think he ever had the balls to do it. I'm different - when I kidnapped Bill Lawrence's daughter, I cut off all of her fingers before sending my demands so that I wouldn't have to sit there and wait for him to ignore them. We worked things about about nine hours in, which is good because I ate her thumb as a midnight snack.

It's emotion. When you are watching a movie you see a woman sitting with her daughter and looking in her eyes and you see butterflies flying in the background and then you suddenly hear scary movie music and it changes the whole thing. But if something sounds different it changes the movie. Music is the back drop of what you talk about.

Perhaps the most important contribution to me being centered in the midst of this chaos is my daughter, Krystal Ann. I am very lucky because she works with me and is responsible for many aspects of the business on the marketing side of my career. This allows us to travel together and experience life on the road, seeing the world. Having family with me is very important and grounding.

But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.

I wrapped a movie called 'Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.

My great grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.

It is essential to collectively struggle to recover our status as Daughters of the Earth. In that is our strength, and the security, not in the predator, but in the security of our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can insure our security as the Mothers of our Nations.

It is not in the bright, happy day, but only in the solemn night, that other worlds are to be seen shining in their long, long distances. And it is in sorrow - the night of the soul - that we see farthest, and know ourselves natives of infinity, and sons and daughters of the Most High.

When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have, it is a world that moves away from unequal, unstable, unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally, nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.

The ratings system is so bogus and people know it. Fewer and fewer people care. The ratings board has sort of exposed itself. But my problem is, as a parent, there's this area of film that my daughters want to see. They're not my kind of films, I don't want to go see them, but I really want to know whether my daughters can see them or not. The morality of what the ratings board is doing now escapes me. I don't get it.

Go, mark the matchless working of the powerThat shuts within the seed the future flower;Bids these in elegance of form excel.In color these, and those delight the smell;Sends nature forth, the daughter of the skies,To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes.

For 10 years, I'd been working as a freelance writer and editor, making money but not a living. It was a good arrangement family-wise, allowing me to stay home with our daughter, but not so great financially or, sometimes, ego-wise.

I know that I could really kill for my daughter. I know because I'm living for her, so I'm fierce when it comes down to it. And I feel the same about my husband and my family. I'm just fiercely protective. It's like, that's my lair and nobody messes with my lair.